Desalination of seawater or brackish water is generally performed by either of the following two main processes: (a) by evaporation of water vapor or (b) by use of a semi-permeable membrane to separate fresh water from a concentrate. In a phase-change or thermal processes, the distillation of seawater is achieved by utilizing a heat source. In the membrane processes, electricity is used either for driving high-pressure pumps or for establishing electric fields to separate the ions.
Important commercial desalination processes based on thermal energy are multi-stage flash (MSF), multiple-effect distillation (MED) and thermal vapor compression (TVC). The MSF and MED processes consist of many serial stages at successively decreasing temperature and pressure.
The multistage flash process is based on the generation of vapor from seawater or brine due to a sudden pressure reduction (flashing) when seawater enters an evacuated chamber. The process is repeated stage-by-stage at successively decreasing pressures. Condensation of vapor is accomplished by regenerative heating of the feed water. This process requires an external steam supply, normally at a temperature around 100° C. The maximum operating temperature is limited by scale formation, and thus the thermodynamic performance of the process is also limited.
For the multiple-effect distillation system, water vapor is generated by heating the seawater at a given pressure in each of a series of cascading chambers. The steam generated in one stage, or “effect,” is used to heat the brine in the next stage, which is at a lower pressure. The thermal performance of these systems is proportional to the number of stages, with capital cost limiting the number of stages to be used.
In thermal vapor compression systems, after water vapor is generated from the saline solution, the water vapor is compressed using a high pressure steam supply and nozzle and then condensed to generate potable water.
A second important class of industrial desalination processes uses membrane technologies, principally reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodialysis (ED). Reverse osmosis employs power to drive a pump that increases the pressure of the feed water to the desired value. The required pressure depends on the salt concentration of the feed. The pumps are normally electrically driven. For reverse osmosis systems, which are currently the most economical desalination systems, the cost of water production may reach US$3/m3 for plants of smaller capacity (e.g., 5 to 100 m3/day). Also, reverse osmosis plants require expert labor for operation and maintenance purposes. The electrodialysis process also requires electricity to produce migration of ions through suitable ion-exchange membranes. Both reverse osmosis and electrodialysis are useful for brackish water desalination; reverse osmosis, however, is also competitive with multi-stage flash distillation processes for large-scale seawater desalination.
The multistage flash process represents more than 75% of the thermal desalination processes, while the reverse osmosis process represents more than 90% of membrane processes for water production. Multistage flash plants typically have capacities ranging from 100,000 to almost 1,000,000 m3/day. The largest reverse osmosis plant currently in operation is the Ashkelon plant, at 330,000 m3/day.
Other approaches to desalination include processes such as ion-exchange, liquid-liquid extraction, and the gas hydrate process. Most of these approaches are not widely used except when there is a requirement to produce high purity (total dissolved solids <10 ppm) water for specialized applications.
Another interesting process that has garnered much attention recently is the forward osmosis process. In this process, a carrier solution is used to create a higher osmotic pressure than that of seawater. As a result the water in seawater flows through the membrane to the carrier solution by osmosis. This water is then separated from the diluted carrier solution to produce pure water and a concentrated solution that is sent back to the osmosis cell. This technology is yet to be proven commercially.
The technology that is at the root of the present invention is known as the humidification-dehumidification (HDH) process. The HDH process involves the evaporation of water from a heated water source (e.g., sea water) in a humidifier, where the evaporated water humidifies a carrier gas. The humidified carrier gas is then passed to a dehumidifier, where the water is condensed out of the carrier gas.
The predecessor of the HDH cycle is the simple solar still. In the solar still, water contained in an enclosure is heated by sunlight to cause evaporation, and the evaporated water is condensed on a glass cover of the enclosure and collected. The most prohibitive drawback of a solar still is its low efficiency (generally producing a gained-output-ratio less than 0.5). The low efficiency of the solar still is primarily the result of the immediate loss of the latent heat of condensation through the glass cover of the still. Some designs recover and reuse the heat of condensation, increasing the efficiency of the still. These designs (called multi-effect stills) achieve some increase in the efficiency of the still but the overall performance is still relatively low. The main drawback of the solar still is that the various functional processes (solar absorption, evaporation, condensation, and heat recovery) all occur within a single component.